Space guns: power, passion and politics

June 18th, 2007

New Scientist reported briefly this week on renewed interest in space exploration, and some of the problems that entailed. They aired the idea of space guns: gigantic canons that can shoot a projectile into space. What they didn’t mention is that this idea was explored thoroughly over the last four decades, in a torrid affair that blended genius, passion, politics, the Cold War, illegal arms deals, imprisonment, Middle Eastern dictators, spies, and ultimately, the assassination of Gerald Bull.

Gerald Bull was a gifted artillery engineer whose life was centred around a single goal: creating a gun large enough to launch a payload into space. Bull earned his PhD at the University in Toronto in 1951, becoming the youngest ever graduate in the process. But his engineering genius was tempered by a lack of social skills that plagued his entire life, as Bull constantly came into conflict with his peers, superiors, and sometimes even entire governments.

In 1960, with funding from both Canada and the US, Bull began the High Altitude Research Project. He worked on this project for seven years, eventually building guns large enough to launch a projectile 60 miles high, into sub-orbital space. Canada pulled out of the HARP project in 1967 in protest at the Vietnam War; Gerald Bull took his supergun and formed a private company, the Space Research Corporation. The CIA helped to land his first major contract, supplying South Africa with 30,000 artillery shells, barrels and other equipment. His work enabled South Africa to win against Angola, but when President Carter took office in 1976, the winds shifted and Bull found himself arrested by the UN for illegal arms dealing. Serving 6 months in a US prison, Bull once again entered business with South Africa upon his release. He helped design one of the most advanced pieces of artillery in the world, the G5 Howitzer, which could fire shells over 30 miles. But once again, Bull was charged with arms dealing and fined $55,000 dollars.

Bull moved to Brussels and started to sell artillery to China and Iraq throughout the 1980s. It was at this time he convinced Saddam Hussein that Iraq needed to join the space race - and he knew just the method. Work began on “Baby Babylon” in the 80s. With a caliber of around 30 cm, and a barrel length of approximately 100m, Baby Babylon would have a range of 400 miles. But as the name suggested, this was just the a prototype for another supergun, Big Babylon. A five hundred foot long gun dug into a hillside, with a three foot wide barrel, Big Babylon would be able to fire a 2 ton projectile into orbit.

Big Babylon was never completed. In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait and Bull found himself in the middle of a very precarious political position. Despite his insistence that Big Babylon was not a threat to any nation, he had been helping Iraq develop its Scud missiles for several years in return for funding for his supergun project, a fact that bought him few friends. In March 1990, Gerald Bull was approached on his doorstep and shot five times in the head. His assassins are unknown, but the prime suspects are Israeli Mossad agents. However, Bull’s obstinate manner meant that he was never short of enemies, and it may even have been the case that Hussein suspected him of being a spy. The Babylon projects were dismantled and shipped out of Iraq following the war.

Interest in superguns evaporated after Bull’s death, and it looks likely his dream will never be achieved. At the very least, the physics of an undirected projectile mean that it will inevitably fall back to Earth. However, China still has active supergun research projects, recently completing construction of a 21m long gun. Whether these will ever fire satellites instead of shells remains to be seen.

Entry Filed under: General

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